December 4, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — The federal government is closing the public comment period on a plan to change the way it manages ocean habitat off of New England.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is looking to change the way it manages the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and southern New England waters. The three areas are critical for commercial fishing operations and marine animals such as whales and dolphins.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Haven Register
November 29, 2017 — The US’s National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) has released a proposal that could mean dramatic changes for the way fishing is managed off the coasts of the New England states, the Associated Press reports.
The proposed “Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment” from NMFS, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would address the way such species as scallops and haddock are harvested in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and other areas, and how rare whales are protected.
Read the full story at Undercurrent News
November 10, 2017 — There is $300 million worth of mature scallops in waters off the Cape that virtually everyone agrees should be harvested. But that potential economic boon to local fishermen may never materialize.
“Before long, they are just going to die,” said Beau Gribbin, a Provincetown scalloper, explaining that the shellfish only live for about 10 years.
Gribbin was in Washington, D.C. last month working to make sure that doesn’t happen. He joined fellow scalloper Tom Reilly from Chatham, and staff from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, advocating for approval of the so-called Omnibus Habitat Amendment.
The amendment would open up several areas that have been closed to scallopers, including Area 1, part of George’s Bank, and the nearby Nantucket Lighship area, while also creating stronger protections for other crucial areas where groundfish spawn. (These areas were closed in 1994 to protect essential fish habitat.)
He said his arguments were well received on Capitol Hill, but it is still unclear what will happen. Gribbin is already worrying about the unpalatable alternative of having to travel down South next season to make sure his business remains solvent.
In years past, he and many of the two dozen or so scallop captains across the Cape have worked out of Delaware and Maryland to make their quotas. Scallopers have invested greatly in the fishery; they own quota and not using it would mean payments lost and increasing debt.
Read the full story at the Harwich Wicked Local
November 6, 2017 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
We are seeking public comment on an action that would:
Read the proposed rule and supplemental documents as published in the Federal Register, and submit your comments through the online portal. You may also submit comments through regular mail to: John Bullard, Regional Administrator, Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930.
The comment period is open through December 5.
To learn more about NOAA visit their site here.
November 5, 2017 — Fourteen years is a long time.
Consider, in 14 years children go from being unable to do much more than eat, sleep and relieve themselves to walking, talking, and giving serious consideration to driving a car.
Fourteen years is also the length of time of three-and-a-half presidential terms; more than long enough to change the direction of an entire country and the fates of hundreds of millions of people.
Fourteen years is also an interminably long time to wait if your livelihood is at stake. And yet, it took the New England Fisheries Management Council 14 years to develop regulations regarding the protection of fishing habitats. That, in and of itself, would not be so bad; after all, one would hope that those involved would take the time necessary to get the science right on an issue where so much is at stake.
But it has now been two years since those regulations were passed, and there is little indication that they are any closer to being implemented.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times
October 25, 2017 — CHATHAM, Mass. — The concept of fish habitat is pretty simple. Fish, like people, need a place where they can find food and shelter to thrive.
Part of managing fisheries is identifying and protecting that habitat. But the ocean is a big place and a difficult environment to do analysis. Politically, it’s also fractious terrain as fishermen worry about the balance between conservation and being shut out of traditional and productive fishing grounds.
And so, it took 14 years for the New England Fishery Management to craft regulations protecting fish habitat, passing Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2 in June of 2015. But after over two years of review by the council and the National Marine Fisheries Service, it still hasn’t been implemented, and Cape scallop fishermen are worried they may lose hundreds of millions of dollars worth of scallops that will perish before they get permission, under the habitat amendment, to enter closed areas and get them.
“It’s a desert with scallops,” said Seth Rolbein, director of the Cape Cod Fisheries Trust, describing what he said is sandy bottom 50 miles east of Cape Cod in an area closed to fishing since 1994. Bottom surveys, including video surveying, have shown it is loaded with scallops that should be harvested before they die within the next year or two.
“These are older, mature scallops,” Rolbein said. “If we let them go moribund we will have destroyed an important economic resource.”
The New England council estimated fishermen would gain $218 million in income in 2018 and $313 million in the first three years, largely from access to this mother lode of scallops.
Provincetown fisherman Beau Gribbin said many of these scallops are 8 years old, they die off at 10, and the meat becomes less desirable after eight years.
Gribbin employs six people to run two boats out of Provincetown. He scallops from December to July and then goes lobstering for the rest of the year. He owns a portion of the overall scallop quota and has to stop scalloping when it is caught. Although it would take him 12-14 hours each way to travel 84 miles to the closed area, he could catch his daily quota of 600 pounds in just a couple of hours because they are so plentiful. It can take 12 hours to do that in other areas and cause more damage to the bottom habitat used by fish and other species.
Plus, it helps him market and plan his fishing year if he knows he will be able to catch his daily quota each day.
“The time is now to harvest them,” said Andrew Minkiewicz, an attorney for the Fisheries Survival Fund, which represents many of the large New Bedford scallop vessels. These large vessels, known as limited access scallopers, have much higher catch limits, in the tens of thousands of pounds per trip, while the smaller boats in the 40- to 50-foot range and known as general category scallop vessels are limited to 600 pounds per day.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times